Cutthroat Bitch called me up the other day at work and demanded, “Where the fuck are you?”

She hadn’t heard from me in a couple of days — and for the most part, I’ve been hibernating over in Friendland.

If I’m honest with myself, I’m kinda wondering if I’m trying to pretend I’m not depressed…’cause, really, I don’t feel depressed.

What I feel is…well, sort of nothing.

In some ways, I just feel really removed from everything…I sort of feel like a zombie, if you want to know the truth. I’m just…stumbling around and getting from one day to the next. I don’t expect anything to happen. I think I’ve been well conditioned for that by now, actually.

I find myself thinking about that John Donne poem where he wrote, “No man is an island unto himself” but in the last little bit, that’s how I feel; like I’m on an island, standing at the beach, staring out at the water – except, where I used to feel like I was trapped on this island, sitting there like some crazed, derranged lunatic like Tom Hanks in Castaway, I’ve built myself this little place to live and I’ve been on this island for so long that I’m pretty self-sufficient and have stopped holding out hope that a rescue party is on its way.

There are no smoke signals; no SOS flares; no get-me-off-this-island attempts.

I’ve stopped climbing out to the look-out point to see if anybody is coming to save me – instead, I climb out merely to sit and stare out at the water.

Today, I didn’t really feel like heading out of the office and spent a part of my lunch eating a chicken sandwich while staring out at the street below.

Yeah — I know. Reading about this must be really boring.

I find myself thinking about this e-mail that someone sent me after reading my other blog.

She said that I was “real” — that, because I was brutally honest, I was one of the few genuine people out there.

It was nice — every once in awhile, when it sort of feels like I’m in that Stevie Smith poem, “not waving but drowning”, it’s like the universe will see fit to have someone write me an e-mail like that…and for the space of a few seconds, it sort of makes me feel better.

I’m not sure why.

When I decided I needed a new journal to symbolically turn the page onto a new chapter, a part of me did wonder if maybe I was just censoring myself and being “less real” because I was just so fucking sick and tired of reading about how the same things seemed to plague my mind.

And to a large extent, I know I don’t really dwell on those things so much anymore…but at the same time, I know that the people who find their way onto my old blog feel a connection with who I used to be. Why else would my most popular post be about loneliness?

And I hate saying this, but I do realize that the main reason I’ve never been a consistent blog reader for other people’s blogs is because I’ll connect with what they’re saying when they’re miserable, but when they’re happy and moving forward with their life, a part of me used to think, “Hmm. They managed to get through that rough patch in their life and they’ve moved onto the next stage. How come I’m still stuck with the same problems?”

And let’s face it: people don’t tend to write as much when they’re happy and living full lives.

(Though, I’d like to think I’m not like that, seeing as I actually write for a living — and writing is such a big part of who I am.)

In the last little bit, I’ve been reading, “Couldn’t Keep It To Myself”, which is a collection of short stories or personal essays written by the women of York Correctional Institute and edited by Wally Lamb.

The stories are breathtakingly honest and beautiful — because they tell the truth, no matter how painful it is to own up to it. And in the foreward, Wally Lamb writes about how the writing process sort of became this healing process for a lot of the women — and I understood that.

Committing what you feel inside your heart onto pen and paper — or in my case, on the screen — has always been one of the most important things that I do each day.

The sound of my fingertips striking each key on my laptop is one of my favourite sounds in the whole wide world.

I write every day. I don’t always share it with the great wide anonymous world out there, of course, but it’s a big part of me.

And in the last couple of days, I’ve been trying to figure out why I’ve been feeling so…blah.

I don’t think it has anything to do with Valentine’s Day, even though I once again find myself single.

And lately, I think I’ve really begun to let go of my Jim Halpert.

Today, on the bus, this grotesquely overweight guy ambled on.

His hand was so meaty and puffy that each finger looked like a water balloon.

I was surprised to see he had a wedding ring on.

But instead of going down that familiar route of wondering what was so wrong with me that I couldn’t find someone, I just turned my head and continued reading my book, reminding myself that maybe there were worse things in this world than not being loved. (As in romantic love.)

If you have everything else — great family, great friends, great career, great standard of living, great health, and great financial security…then there’s really not much to complain about, is there?